In 1948 Stalin tried to starve the people of
West Berlin into submission. He failed. The Western allies kept West Berlin
supplied through a massive airlift.

What were the consequences of the Berlin
Blockade?

Towards a divided Germany

By early 1948 Stalin had control of much of
Eastern Europe. The Americans responded by helping to make Western Europe
wealthy and pro-American. As part of this process the division of Germany
became more and more permanent. The west of Germany had long been the
industrial heartland of continental Europe. The US government decided to
include western Germany in its plans for a new non-communist Western Europe.

News of a new currency for the west of Germany
alarmed Stalin. He saw it as another step towards a divided Germany with the
wealthier, larger part of the country closely allied to the USA. Stalin was
worried by the idea of a successful, anti-communist government in the west of
Germany. In his mind it raised the possibility of another German attack on
Russia, as in 1914 and 1941.

In attempting to stop the formation of West
Germany, Stalin thought he had one powerful weapon. West Berlin was controlled
by the American, French and British forces - but it was a western 'island' deep
inside the Soviet sector of Germany. Soviet forces controlled all the land
routes into West Berlin. Over 2 million people lived in West Berlin and Stalin
could cut off their supplies by simply closing the roads and the railways. As a
protest against the currency reforms and the moves towards a divided Germany
Stalin decided to put a blockade on West Berlin.

The emergence of West Germany

• The Marshall Plan for the economic
rebuilding of Europe was extended to the western part of Germany but not to the
Soviet zone

• In January 1947 the British and the American
governments fused their two zones of Germany into a single administrative unit
that was known at the time as Bizonia. In many ways this was the beginning of
the establishment of West Germany.

• In June 1948 the Western allies introduced a
new currency into their area of control. The new money, known as the
Deutschmark, was not used in the Soviet zone.

The Berlin Airlift

The Western allies were taken by surprise at
the start of the blockade. The Americans were initially not sure how to
respond. Some advisers thought that the Western powers would have to give way
because the 2 million people in West Berlin would starve as long as the roads
out of Berlin remained blocked. Another view was that tanks should be used to blast
a way through the blockade.

The leading American military expert, General
Clay, was keen to send his troops down the autobahn towards Berlin. This could
easily have led to a full-scale war with the USSR. The government decided on a
middle course: not to provoke war by sending troops towards Berlin but to keep
the city supplied by aircraft. Never before had a huge besieged city been kept
going by an airlift.

To people in the West, Stalin seemed to be
acting with extreme aggression. The attack on Berlin looked like the first step
towards a communist march westwards. The Western allies acted firmly in
carrying out the airlift. To President Truman it was a test of the new policy
of containment: the USSR could not be allowed to take over West Berlin.

Stalin ends the siege

Eventually Stalin had to admit that his
attempt to starve out West Berlin had failed. In May 1949 the Soviet
authorities called off the blockade. The airlift was a triumph for the American
and British air forces. During the airlift British and US planes flew nearly
200,000 missions to Berlin. At the end of the blockade the airport in West
Berlin was handling an enormous 1,000 arrivals and departures every day.

Over 1.5 million tons of food, fuel and
equipment was sent in to Berlin. This achievement clearly proved how determined
the USA was to resist Stalin. The Berlin airlift showed how far international
politics had changed since 1945. Berlin had then been a symbol of defeated
Nazism . By 1948 it was a symbol of Western freedom and the struggle with
communism.